Good news from the Susan G. Komen Foundation!

Karen Handel, the conservative anti-choice executive who led the foundation into an embarrassing public relations debacle, has announced that she is resigning her position. This exit is most excellent news on a couple of levels. It means one bad apple has been shooed out of an influential position. It means that the Susan G. Komen Foundation recognizes the importance of the whole of women’s health issues (we hope!), and could signify a smarter, better direction for the organization and make it a palatable option in the future. And what’s really cool about this whole noisy process is that the pro-choice movement flexed its muscles and won.

Rise up! We are strong!

Say what, Ron Paul?

No one seriously wants this loon in the White House, do they? I’m having trouble parsing this:

On the eve of Saturday’s Nevada caucus, Ron Paul sits down with Piers Morgan for a revealing interview, during which the Republican from Texas shares his views on rape and abortion: "If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen."

The estrogen, I understand: it’ll prevent any potential pregnancy. But what is an “honest” rape? What is a “dishonest” rape, and what would he do with a woman who was dishonestly raped? He seems to be making weebly distinctions with no meaning at all.

Komen changes course

I don’t think it will help, but after the Susan G. Komen foundation cut funding to Planned Parenthood, they’ve now backed down and said they’ll continue existing grants. After the wingnuts were exposed in the Komen leadership, though, I can’t honestly say that I trust them anymore, and I’d be looking for better recipients of my donations (like the BCRF)…and after this reversal, I imagine the fundies who have been slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves on their influence won’t be so happy, either.

This has been a very bad week for Komen. I would hope that there is some substantial turnover in management, because this has been a case of rank mismanagement of the foundation’s reputation.

Good work, France!

French courts have upheld the Church of Scientology’s conviction, and Xenu and pals are going to have to cough up €600,000.

A French appeals court on Thursday upheld the Church of Scientology’s 2009 fraud conviction on charges it pressured members into paying large sums for questionable remedies.

“Large sums for questionable remedies”…you know that applies to every religion, right? So when will the Catholic church be put in the docket?

Although, admittedly, €600,000 would be pocket change to the Vatican. I think the sum ought to be vastly larger to cover 15 centuries of lies.

Big Charity

It must be tough running a charity. You’ve got a cause you care deeply about, and you’re constantly juggling the game of having to spend money (in administration, advertising, staff) to raise money (for the cause!), and worse, of sometimes having to compromise to achieve your goals — you sometimes have to work with your enemies to get where you’re going. And if you’re really, really good at it, and raise lots and lots of money, it becomes easy to lose sight of the cause while becoming corporate.

So it goes with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the $400 million/year giant pink gorilla of cancer charities, fighting for the cause of ending breast cancer. As charities go, they’re reasonably efficent (about 20% of their budget is overhead, 20% goes to cancer research, and the rest goes to education and health care), and they’re certainly effective — they practically own the color pink, it seems, and their little pink ribbons are ubiquitous. If you’ve donated money to them in the past, you should have no regrets, and you can pat yourself on the back for having done some good.

But it’s time to cut the cord to this Big Charity.

Komen has lost sight of the cause, and has become more of a money-raising machine, for one thing. This is one of those awkward compromises they made to tap into corporate interests: they sold their identity and their label to anyone willing to cough up the cash. One correlation with the incidence of breast cancer is dietary fat — yet Komen went into a commercial promotion with KFC, selling big pink buckets of greasy fried chicken.

It was this national nonprofit education and advocacy organization that coined the term “pinkwashing” to describe the situation where a company purports to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink-ribboned product, but manufactures products that are linked to the disease.

This latest campaign between KFC and Komen is “simply pinkwashing at its worst,” Barbara A. Brenner, JD, executive director of BCA, told Medscape Oncology. “This is just so wrong on every level. . . . This is so much more about KFC’s bottom line than about curing breast cancer,” she said.

This is just one example of losing sight of the goal. I would argue that in addition they’ve been too successful: their marketing has obscured their purpose. We’re drowning in a sea of pink every time breast cancer is brought up, and the symbol of slapping a pink ribbon on something has replaced the substance of the cause. I always say that prayer is the very least you can do, but slapping a ribbon on your car is a very close runner-up.

And now, the last straw. Ultimately, breast cancer research is one part of improving women’s health; if that narrow slice of concern begins to cannibalize the wider aspects of women’s well-being, it does more harm than good. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has reached that point where the money-making machine is being hijacked to benefit organizations that do harm to women.

Specifically, Komen has yanked its support for breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. That’s astonishing. Education and screening for breast cancer is what Komen is all about — it’s what they do. It’s as if I were to announce that I reject the teaching of evolution at a particular college campus because I really hate their football team (and if I had millions of dollars worth of clout). It makes no sense from the perspective of an anti-cancer charity.

It does make sense if you’re a right-wing corporate entity that has funded its growth on a foundation of a universally appreciated cause, but that actually has closer ties to conservative corporate and religious interests. They aren’t so much against breast cancer, as they are for protecting “good” girls, and against those fornicating sluts who get abortions, and can go ahead and die horribly. They listen more to the anti-abortion crusaders (some of whom are on their executive staff!) than to women.

So don’t give to them anymore. Redirect your charitable giving to organizations that don’t have a Puritanical streak, and are a bit less Republican in outlook. There is no shortage; I recommend the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Breast Cancer Charities of America, CancerCare, and the Cancer Research Institute. So far, they all seem to be dedicated to fighting cancer and helping people, and a lot less concerned about policing people’s morality to conform to that of the Religious Right.

But I don’t want Susan G. Komen to go away. I think it is an excellent charity for right-wingers and Christian fundamentalists to donate to — their money will go to a cause we can all support, and it’s better than filling the coffers of the Mormon or Catholic churches.

P.S. There are some very bad arguments for not donating to the Komen foundation out there, and the very worst are those that selectively cite statistics to argue that cancer research is futile. Some cancers have been refractory and have shown little progress in the last decade; others are showing significantly better statistics. But most importantly, our understanding of cancer has steadily advanced, and even where someone dies of the disease, we glean another piece of the puzzle. And of course, what do you propose to do otherwise? Nothing at all?

(Also on Sb)

…and South Dakota follows suit

There was no opposition to a bill that encourages South Dakota public schools to study the bible. This one is as sectarian as they come.

Scripture study and science projects? That’s the prospect some students in South Dakota may face after a substantial majority in the state’s House of Representatives helped pass a resolution to encourage public school districts to incorporate Bible education into curricula. The House passed the resolution last week by a vote of 55-13 after a short floor debate during which no member from either party voiced opposition.

The sponsor of the bill, Steve Hickey, is a pastor, of course. This is clearly a law intended to promote Christianity and Christianity alone in the schools.

Hey, let’s not forget Pennsylvania in the roster of bad, lazy state legislatures. They passed a resolution declaring this the “year of the bible”. That one is just plain dumb: citing vague “great challenges” that the US is facing, it wants Pennsylvanians to turn to an ancient magic book to find strength. They won’t. Real problems need to be confronted with real solutions and hard work, not superstition and a retreat into fairy tales.

Indiana takes another step towards lunacy

Remember how Indiana managed to get a creationist bill through their Education committee? Crank up the dread, dismay, and disgust another notch: it has now passed the Indiana Senate, and is awaiting the approval of the house.

This is the bill that tries to avoid accusations of sectarian religious teaching by encouraging science classes to teach “Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Scientology”. They really don’t get it. None of them are science, and they shouldn’t be taught as if they were.

Yessss…come over to the Dark Side!

One of us! John Cole has seen the light…err, dark?

But from where I stand these days, the only thing I see religion doing in the public sector is gay bashing and telling women, mostly poor and desperate and in deplorable financial and personal situations, what to do with their bodies. I see busybodies deciding what drugs they can dispense to which customers, or deciding that they don’t have to issue a marriage license because of some petty deity that I don’t believe in told them to hate their fellow citizens and ignore the law. In a country in dire financial straits but still spending billions and billions of dollars on education, I see religious folks actively and openly working to make our schoolkids dumber. I see them shooting people who provided a medical procedure, and I see others rummaging through people’s personal lives to find out who hasn’t lived up the word of God. I see glassy-eyed fools running for President claiming that vaccines that save lives actually cause cancer, or that if you get raped and are pregnant, you should just lie back and think of Jeebus and make the best of a bad situation. In fact, everywhere you look these days, if Christianity or religion is getting a mention, it means something ugly is happening and someone somewhere is being victimized, marginalized, or otherwise abused. Go read some of the arguments against integration and you’ll see the same bible verses used today against homosexuals. Fifty years from now, they’ll be recycling them again to trash someone else they don’t like or who isn’t good enough for them.

Turnabout is fair play, unless you’re a Republican

I’m glad someone is finding clever ways to point out the hypocrisy of Republican efforts to invade the privacy of women.

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

What? No lecture about their manly responsibilities, no waiting period, no efforts to redirect these men looking for Viagra towards ineffective treatments? This is hardly fair. But it is a good first step.

Unfortunately, that first step ended in a Republican pratfall.

The Republican-controlled senate narrowly rejected the amendment Monday by a vote of 21 to 19, but passed the mandatory ultrasound bill in a voice vote. A similar bill in Texas, which physicians say has caused a "bureaucratic nightmare," is currently being challenged in court.

Darn. Did no one think to mention to the Republicans that this bill would support the life-styles of a multitude of cardiologists and proctologists? It’s also morally right: every artificial erection should be complemented by an anal injection.

Hungary joins the United States in pandering to the wingnut brigade

I was feeling lonely. The daily spectacle of the Republican presidential candidates prancing their “family values” about the stage had me wondering…is there any other country in the world that would give such idiots such prominence?

And yes there is. Hungary. They just passed a new law that sounds so…American.

The new law says the family, based upon marriage of a man and a woman whose mission is fulfilled by raising children, is an "autonomous community…established before the emergence of law and the State" and that the State must respect it as a matter of national survival. It says "Embryonic and foetal life shall be entitled to protection and respect from the moment of conception," and the state should encourage "homely circumstances" for child care. It obliges the media to respect marriage and parenting and assigns parents, rather than the State, primary responsibility for protecting the rights of the child. The law enumerates responsibilities for minors, including respect and care for elderly parents.

Hungary also has a new constitution, with some good points mingled among the bad.

The constitution calls for the protection of life from conception and bans torture, human trafficking, eugenics, and human cloning. It recognizes marriage as the “conjugal union of a man and a woman.”

Something about their obsessions suggests the grasping hand of the Catholic Church in all this.